


Membrane or Skin or Bones or Flesh or Blood

by saltslimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Sickfic, im breaking the paint finish series but i have good(ish) reason, its really becoming a bingo here huh, smoke inhalation, the usual suspect is to blame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 14:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18367463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Prompto and Noctis get caught in a burning building and then things spiral sort of in the direction of the garbage, quickly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Kaciart](kaciart.tumblr.com) stole my kneecaps in her stream, as she often does. Plot primarily by her, and there's a drawing to go with it!
> 
> Its a two part so I might actually edit the comfort haha
> 
> oh yeah and the title is the title of the final paper i was supposed to be working on when i wrote this haha i should start giving my papers normal names

Noctis didn’t really re-enter his body until someone draped a heavy coat around his shoulders and then he looked up to see Gladio. His hand was still on the coat, rested on Noctis like he was confirming his ability to stand up.

“I’m fine,” Noctis said absently. The EMT was fitting a mask over Prompto’s face. His cheeks were red and dusted with smoke. There was ash in his hair.

“Yeah, Ignis is gonna want that in writing from a citadel doctor, but okay.” He’d spotted Ignis when he first arrived on the scene. He was shouting at someone. Well, not shouting. He was Ignis-shouting, which was like shouting but worse because it was clipped and brutal instead of loud and angry like Gladio would be.

Gladio squeezed his shoulder, reminding Noctis that he both had a corporeal form and wasn’t alone. For a moment, the world had been narrowing down to a point where all he could see was Prompto’s pale, smoke-streaked face and the blue gloves that the paramedic wore.

And then someone was talking to him again, and he was thinking about the column of flames, the smoke when they’d stepped into the hall, Prompto shoving him towards the floor. The sound of coughing as Prompto reached up to open the door to the stairs. Ash falling like snow. 

Someone said his name sharply.

“I’m listening. Is Prom okay?”

“I’ve been informed that he should be monitored for the next twenty-four hours but is expected to recover. We can drop him off on our way to the citadel,” Ignis said. Noctis sighed, which devolved into coughing. It was a fucking Friday too, there wasn’t even the promise of time off school. Just the notion that most of his belongings were probably destroyed, and their night of video games and hanging out had been cut abruptly and traumatically short. 

He still had Gladio’s coat on in the car. Prompto was wrapped in a blanket the EMTs put on him. 

“Ifrit’s balls, it would only happen to you,” Gladio said.

“It’s not like we set the building on fire,” Noctis said.

“I must admit, when I got the call, the thought did cross my mind,” Ignis said. Noct caught his gaze in the rear-view mirror, and then followed it to Prompto. His cheeks were flushed but he held the blanket tight around himself. He hadn’t said much since his statement tugging Noct to the door-- “We gotta get out. Now.” Neither of them had said much.

“It seems we owe you our gratitude,” Ignis continued. He was speaking to Prom now, who blinked owlishly.

“Yeah, who’d have thought you’d be the one hauling Noct out of a burning building?”

“I paid attention in fire safety,” Prompto said. His voice was so thick and hoarse that he almost sounded like a different person. Noctis laughed, although it hurt his throat.

“Make sure to explain to your parents about how you’ll need to be monitored,” Ignis said, as they were pulling into the driveway. Prompto’s house was dark--his parents must have been asleep already. 

“Y-yeah,” Prompto said. He opened his mouth like maybe he was going to say something else--or maybe he was struggling to breathe, Noct thought with a jolt. But Prompto just closed his mouth and dipped his head in a quick nod.

“Sorry the weekend sucks now,” Noctis said. Prompto waved it off. They watched him go up the steps, retrieve a key from under the mat, and go inside. Then Ignis pulled out of the driveway and back onto the road. Streetlights flickered against the windows. Noctis fiddled with his phone in his lap but didn’t turn the screen on. 

“Do we really have to go to the Citadel?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. Sometimes it was just reassuring to hear Ignis make that particular sigh. 

{{{{{}}}}}

The lights in the empty kitchen seemed overbright where they reflected off the countertops and the stainless appliances. Prompto blinked hard, but it did nothing to dispel the gritty feeling in his eyes, the lingering heat in his cheeks. He ran a thumb over his phone where it still rested in his pocket. 

The EMT was pretty clear about Prompto needing to be monitored but that was just… he’d seen Ignis’ expression when they arrived, and the fear and the exhaustion in Noct’s face. What was he gonna do, tell them that on top of everything else they had to deal with, he needed someone to babysit him because his parents were  _ still  _ tied up in Altissia?

He got himself a glass of water and sat down on the couch. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out to read a text from Noct, but his brain stalled when he went to type a reply. He drank a few sips of water but put the glass down when he started to feel vaguely sick. 

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: yo im telling my dad abt ur heroics

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: hes very impressed

Prompto remembered how to work his thumbs.

PROMPTO: oh six

PROMPTO: thats crazy

He stared down at his own messages, which were sort of blurred by his eyes watering. Not a lot of substance. His mouth tasted awful, burnt and ashy, but the taste didn’t go away when he swallowed. Everything seemed to get thicker. All the pain seemed to intensify. Dizzily, he squinted into his screen and started moogling his symptoms. Noctis texted something that he didn’t read.

He felt like he was going to throw up, and he didn’t know if it was from the headache or the way he couldn’t really draw a breath or both. Moogle said go to the hospital. He couldn’t make out the clock on the kitchen stove and his phone screen was hurting his eyes. But it hadn’t been that late when he and Noctis were picking the movie, so it was probably not after eleven. Twelve at the latest. The buses would still be running.

Prompto thought to put on more appropriate clothes but the stairs seemed insurmountable and leaving more pressing, so he just pulled a large coat from the front closet and put his boots on without socks. He locked the door behind himself, and the night air felt better for a fraction of a second and then much worse. It forced wracking coughs from him, so hard he had to lean on the door for support. 

There was a group of people maybe a few years older than him waiting at the bus stop. He was glad to be around people, even if they were noisy, and they made his head hurt more. He couldn’t stop coughing. A few of them were looking at him. 

He stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and tried to blink away whatever debris seemed to be lodged in his eyes. He wished he’d remembered his glasses when they were leaving Noct’s. Although they hadn’t really be a priority at the time.

It was warm on the bus, and he managed to get the coughing under control for close to a minute before it came back in full force. The lights seemed too bright where they reflected on the night-black windows. Each time the bus lurched to a stop or a start he felt like he was going to puke.

He threw up in one of the trash bins at the station. Not a lot and not necessarily puking. He was just coughing up thick grey discharge of some kind, gripping the front of his coat and hoping not too many people were staring. The subway was at least not so crowded.

He lost a piece of time between getting off and arriving to the hospital triage desk. They took his name and his date of birth and his blood pressure, slapped a bracelet on him and sent him to sit down.

His whole face and chest felt overly warm, he tried shrugging off the coat but it didn’t really help. The person seated across from him was having a fairly loud phone conversation about a potentially sprained wrist. Beside him a girl was crying softly and typing on her phone. He remembered his own, which had been at half battery. He opened it to see a flood of notifications, exclusively from Noctis.

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: did you fall asleep???

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: duuuuuuuuude

He fumbled to type out a response.

PROMPTO: srry at hospital cuase chest hurts

PROMPTO: ttyl

There was music playing from the headphones of the girl beside him, loud enough that he could pick up the bassline. His phone vibrated angrily in his lap. It hurt to take a breath. He closed one eye to read the screen.

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: prom!!!

NORMAL GUY FROM SCHOOL: what hospital?

He glanced around for a sign. It was a moment before he spotted it emblazoned on the front of the desk. Typing seemed too difficult. His head was pounding. He wanted to at least close his eyes for a bit. But Noctis was still texting him, insistently, so he took a picture and sent it off. Then he clicked the screen off once, and it refused to click back on. So he sank his head into his hands and tried to find a way to take a breath that didn’t hurt.


	2. Chapter 2

The chairs in the medical wing of the citadel were carved wood, and they were about as comfortable as they looked. Gladio sat down, opened his book, read one sentence, which went as follows: “The sunset lit her hair like fire,” and then the door hit the back of the wall and rebounded back.

“Notics, would you please--”

“No, because he did text me back, and he’s at the hospital, so we gotta go.”

“You’re not going anywhere until you’re cleared by a doctor  _ and  _ you’ve gotten some rest. And you can attempt to go over my head but you and I both know how it’s going to end,” Ignis said. Gladio closed the book while stifling a sigh.

“You can’t stop me from leaving!”

“I think we definitely can,” Gladio said. He shot Ignis a questioning look.

“Noctis is very concerned for his friend Prompto’s well-being.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Gladio said. Ignis pinched the bridge of his nose. Noct hadn’t backed down in any way, although his posture was slumping a little. He still had that look that Gladio generally took as a warning they were minutes away from adding a sword to the situation. “You know you can’t go.”

“If he tells me what hospital someone has to go check on him.”

“All right, we’ll send someone,” Ignis said. Noctis’ phone cheeped loudly. “Will you please come back and talk to the doctor?”

“Who are you sending?”

“We’ll--” Ignis started. Gladio saw two opportunities melded into one. First, the opportunity to be away from hurricane Noctis. Second, the opportunity (since he definitely wasn’t sleeping any time soon) to at least read his book. The heroine was inches away from dumping that cad and finally getting the job she deserved. Somewhere, in the next 60 pages, someone was going to be bent over a desk. It was all very predictable in a very good way. 

“I’ll go,” he said. “You don’t need me around what with the crownsguard all on high alert. And I can update Noct. You got the name of the hospital?” he asked. Ignis raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Noctis looked back at his screen, typing furiously.

“I sent it to you.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know. Go back inside,” he said. Noctis opened his mouth like he was going to say something before he seemed to calculate how much things were going his way, at which point he closed it, turned on his heel, and went back inside. Gladio watched Ignis pull the door gently closed.

It was cold outside, and still getting colder. But the night air tasted fresh, even if his jacket smelled a little like soot.

He briefly contemplated getting a crownsguard escort to drive him, because it would be funny, but he didn’t actually want to bother, so he took the subway. He located Prompto within five minutes of entering the hospital. He was in the far corner of the waiting room, or at least, someone with his build and blond hair was, slumped forward with their head in their hands.

“Prompto?” Gladio tried, and his head snapped up. Wow, he was really pink. He looked like he’d been brutally sunburned. Gladio didn’t know the kid that well but he knew he usually wasn’t that color.

“H-hey--” Prompto started, but whatever greeting he’d been intending just dissolved into coughing. He had an empty chair on either side of him. Gladio glanced around.

“Are your parents getting coffee or something?”

“Are--what?” Prompto wheezed. It sounded like one of his lungs was about to come out. Gladio sat down beside him and squeezed one of his shoulders, trying to think what he’d do for Iris in a situation like this. Well. Iris wasn’t really ever in situations like this. She broke her leg once, but she was otherwise a pretty hardy kid. Eventually Prompto seemed to get control of his breathing, although each breath in came with a weird noise, almost a rattling.

“Just take it slow,” Gladio said. He glanced around for any sight of people who could be concerned Argentum parents, but there was just a woman talking to the nurse and two paramedics cleaning and re-packing their gurney.

“They’re not here,” Prompto finally managed to say.

“Why not?”

“They’re on a,” he paused to swallow thickly, “a work trip.”

“And you didn’t mention that when we drove you home?” Under his hands, Prompto felt warm to the touch. And he was squirming slightly under Gladio’s grip, as if maybe he was hurting him. He pulled his hand away quickly. Prompto just shook his head miserably.

Gladio tried to do some adding up of facts. He’d only met this kid on a few occasions, one of them being a royal event and the rest of them at the arcade. The first few times he was just on guard for security risks. The last time he saw the kid his only observations had been that he was annoying, kind of loud, and easily as dorky as Noctis but less ashamed of it.

Prompto’s breathing evened out but remained crunchy. Gladio sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Well, Noctis is really stressed. So I’ll uh, wait around until you get seen.”

“You don’t have to,” Prompto croaked.

“Sure but where would I rather be, right? Listening to Noct whine or reading my book?” That seemed to elicit something almost like a laugh from Prompto. He was way quieter without Noct around, and that wasn’t an observation based on his hospital-self but on the few odd moments they had spent alone together.

He opened his book after a few minutes passed with neither of them speaking. She really was breaking up with that asshole, in front of their boss no less. But he read the same sentence three times over and stalled out.

“How long have you been waiting?” Gladio asked. Prompto shrugged.

“Dunno.”

“They didn’t give you a time estimate or anything?”

“No.”

“Huh.” Well, hospitals were slow, he figured. Not everyone had access to the medical teams in the citadel. Gladio tried to get back into the book while Prompto slumped away from him in his seat and continued to draw ugly-sounding breaths. After what felt like too long, Prompto started coughing into his sleeve again, this time bringing up first grey and then red mucus.

“Aw yuck, look at this,” Prompto said, showing off a sleeveful of gunk. Gladio suddenly felt some kind of incredible kinship with Ignis, one he hadn’t realized they shared before.

He got out of his seat, crossed to the desk and slapped down two pieces of ID, his citadel access badge, and his insurance card.

“That guy--” he pointed to Prompto, “needs to be seen right now. Is that something we can do, or do I need to arrange transport for him?”

“Bud--uh, sir, everyone goes through the same triage--” the nurse started to say. She didn’t finish because Prompto fell forward off his chair and hit the floor with a soft thud, at which point several people jumped up from their seats and the two paramedics looked over in mild surprise.

Things kicked into gear after that. Gladio didn’t actually text Noctis until he was relegated to another different waiting room, and by that time he even had a missed call from Ignis.

The thought did cross his mind to lie, but he didn’t want to risk Noctis losing all trust in him, or potentially trying to impale him with something. Not that he’d succeed, but still. Him trying it would make things hard for everyone.

He went with a pared down version of the truth, which amounted to: Prompto was being seen and he was waiting on news. Shortly after he got a message from Ignis that Noct had fallen asleep, which both made perfect sense and was sort of hilarious.

Gladio read through a full thirty pages before it occurred to him that he hadn’t been paying attention to any of them. He was too focussed on the door to the waiting room, and on the soft light beginning to leak through the window on the far wall.

And then he woke up with a start, and the room was no longer night-bright, and his book was on the floor. He went and got coffee, and five or so minutes after that they let him in to see Prompto, which felt more than awkward, because he didn’t particularly  _ know _ Prompto, and this was evidently a family-and-closest friends kind of visiting situation, but then again. Then again, no one was coming, not until Noctis was let free, or his parents got off their plane or wherever they were coming from. And he didn’t see things halfway through. He saw them to the end, whenever it was required of him.

So on that serious mental note, and having just burned his tongue on very bad coffee, he followed a nurse in to see Prompto, who was wearing an oxygen mask and sitting up in the bed and looking still tired and sun-burned but less like he was staring death in the face.

“W-you’re still here?” Prompto sputtered. The nurse left them alone, which made Gladio even less sure of himself. He crossed to the bed.

“Uh, yeah. Job’s not done until Noct knows you’re okay.”

“Oh.” One of Prompto’s hands was clenched in the blankets. “They said I can’t leave until probably the end of the week though.”

“That bad, huh?” Gladio pulled the nearest chair over and dropped down so he’d feel less like he was towering over the bed. Prompto’s expression twisted, and for a moment Gladio thought he was in pain, or maybe about to puke. “You okay? What hurts?”

“No, I’m fine.” Prompto reached for the mask as if to pull it away, and Gladio grabbed his wrist on instinct.

“Definitely leave that.”

“They said I can’t go if there’s no one to look after me. But um, I was hoping someone could talk to them because I--I really can’t afford to stay that long.”

Gladio blinked. He followed Prompto’s gaze down to his own hands, where he realized he’d bent his flimsy paperback in half. He had a box of them at home, got them at a garage sale. They were kind of damage-prone, so he didn’t even fold over the page corners. Here he’d split a seam right down the centre of the busty heroine. 

“Uh. Yeah. What about--when are your parents coming?”

“My parents?”

“You said they were on a business trip or something? But you were kind of messed up.”

“I texted them, it’s fine.”

“What do you mean, fine?”

“Like, they can’t leave right now. But they know I’m okay.”

“But you’re  _ not _ okay!” He didn’t mean to raise his voice. Prompto flinched noticeably. Gladio felt like his limbs had gone sort of cold. “You--okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--shit.”

“I’m like, fine dude,” Prompto said. He looked so far from fine. He looked like even this conversation was tiring him out. He also kind of looked like he was crying.

“You sure about that?”

“My eyes are messed up from the smoke.” Prompto scrubbed at them with the back of his hand.

“Do you want a hug or something?” Gladio said. He felt like a big asshole, which he usually considered a good thing, but it was really backfiring at that moment.

“No,” Prompto said thickly. He really managed to sound like Noctis, occasionally. They’d only been friends for a few months, but it was obvious they were rubbing off on each other.

“C’mre little buddy,” Gladio said. But he just held his arms out, it was Prompto who leaned into them, and who took a handful of his shirt, and who definitely probably leaked tears on Gladio’s chest.

Noct’s apartment was fucked, so that left his place and Ignis’, and given the choice he was obviously going to stiff Ignis with the job of looking after someone, which he was good at already. Plus, it would put them all in the same area, and he wouldn’t have to leave the citadel to meet Noct.

And this would in turn give him time to find out what kind of business trip was so pressing it would prevent parents from visiting their son in the hospital. But for the moment that could wait. For the moment, he leaned Prompto back onto the bed, and helped him adjust the oxygen mask back into place.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he said. And he meant it. And he intended to see it through to the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am using my phone hotspot to post this so its sonic tyme love ya all ty for the lovely comments which i will remember to reply to like soooooon but i figured you'd prefer the update

**Author's Note:**

> Avarii and G9, thank you both for beta!!! and for research, which was wicked helpful
> 
>  
> 
> [[tumblr if ya like]](saltslimes.tumblr.com)


End file.
